2018-05-14
Brooke Strong
Scripture: John 17:6-11,17-19
Sometimes I’m aghast that not everybody likes what I like. Doesn’t it just astound you, for example, that not everyone likes the New York Yankees? Or that not everybody delights in avocadoes. Or that not everybody is as smitten by our granddaughter Allie as Mary and I are. It reminds me of the story of the woman on a plane who shows her seatmate photo after photo of her family, going on and on with endless stories about them all, totally oblivious to the fact that her seatmate hasn’t said a word and might also have a life. Suddenly she realizes how much she has dominated the conversation, and blurts out, “Well, enough about me. What do you think of my children?” One of Jesus’ fondest hopes is that we might all finally live into our fundamental unity. Not so easy for the two on the plane to become one, though, is it.
I heard a woman say recently she felt as though she had been raised on a different planet from her siblings, even though they had been brought up in the same house. They had totally different outlooks on life, they read completely different kinds of books, and they were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Apparently nothing in common. Become one? Not likely.
When Jesus comes to the end of his life, he knows it’s crucial to leave his disciples with what they most need to know. So, in John’s telling of the story, Jesus embarks on what is often called his “Farewell Discourse.” It’s what you and I might well do if we knew we were on the verge of death. “Were there any last words?” people sometimes want to know when someone they love dies. I can imagine that I, too, would want to say what needed to be said if I knew my death were imminent.
Sometimes, in hospice organizations, caregivers talk about the five things that most need to be said at the time of death. “Thank you” is one. “I love you” is a second. “I’m sorry” is a third. “I forgive you” is a fourth. And “Goodbye” is last. That pretty much covers what most needs to be said by and to most people—to thank them for what they’ve meant to you, to tell them openly that you love them, to apologize for the ways you may have let them down, to forgive them for their failings and shortcomings, and to be clear and forthright about saying goodbye.
Saying goodbye matters. When I studied as a chaplain as part of my seminary training, I served in a state prison in Maine. My congregation, if you will, was the five women in Maine, at the time, who had been imprisoned for murder. I spent time with them on the cell block each day, and got to know them pretty well. And when the end of that summer came, my supervisor and I talked about how I might take my leave of them. And she said to me with real intensity, “Don’t you dare say to them, ‘See ya,’ or something equally trite and false. The fact is, you’re not going to see them again. Most or all of these women have been betrayed by people who didn’t tell them the truth. Give them the honor of telling them the truth. Say, ‘Goodbye.’”
In many ways, parting is different from death, of course. But in other ways, it’s the same. What matters is that at a time of either parting or death, the truth be told. People need to hear what’s most important. Thank you, I love you, I’m sorry, I forgive you, goodbye.
It’s no different with Jesus. He’s on the verge of death, and in his farewell discourse, he says what he needs to say. Some of you will remember the John Mayer song, “Say”: “Even if your hands are shaking/ And your faith is broken,/ Even as the eyes are closing/ Do it with a heart wide open. Say what you need to say.” With closing eyes and a heart wide open, Jesus says what he needs to say. It’s farewell time, and so he makes it clear to the disciples what he most wants them to know.
Tellingly, these last earthly words of Jesus before his passion and death happen in the form of a prayer. No last words of Jesus would be complete if they were not held and framed by God. By praying these words, it’s as if Jesus is saying, not so subtly, to his disciples, ‘Don’t do or think or say anything without being hyper-aware that it all happens in God’s sight and with God’s care and under God’s blessing.’
In this final prayer of Jesus, he does three things. He first prays for himself. Then he prays for the disciples. And then he prays for the wider church as it goes forward. Our section of the prayer this morning is the part in which Jesus asks God to enrich the life of the disciples. And there are at least two striking things for which Jesus prays: he prays that these disciples might be one, even as Jesus and God are one. And he prays that they might be sanctified in the truth.
Right from the beginning of John’s gospel, we are told that Jesus and God are one. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). Couldn’t be clearer. In John’s eyes, Jesus isn’t just some exemplary person whom we should imitate. In his eyes, Jesus is God incarnate, God in human form. They are one. Think of two tresses of hair braided tightly together. Or maybe better, the way butter and sugar creamed together make for a mouth-watering cookie. They’re not separable. They’re intertwined. This is the way God and Jesus are. The two are one. And together they become something new, something more, something radiantly united.
And what Jesus is saying is: ‘This is what I hope for all of my people; Please join them together in the way that you, God, and I are joined together. My fondest hope—and these words are so significant that they are the motto of the United Church of Christ—is that these people of mine, these people I love and treasure, become one, that they bond and become something they could not possibly be on their own—all because they are one.’
And you and I look around and we go, “Yeah, right! How likely is that!? My friends don’t even like the Yankees! How can I become one with them?” Becoming one is a real challenge! My sister-in-law Emilie wrote a piece this week in which she compared the way she watches baseball with the way her husband, my brother Tim, watches baseball. They watch it in entirely different ways. “I love the slow pace of baseball,” she says. “It’s like a meditation to me, nice and calm and quiet. I love all things associated with baseball, the beautifully mowed green grass and the warm summer nights, the crack of the bat and the thwack when a strike hits the mitt, the way the crowds all sing together. The guys are nice to look at, and they high-five and hug and pat each other on the butts. Baseball is joyful and patient. It gives me happy feelings [and these feelings, she says, are why I watch].
“Tim [on the other hand] is a numbers guy . . ., so baseball statistics make sense in his world; numbers allow him a way to talk about his love for the game in specific and nuanced ways, something he has done since he was a little kid. But I just don’t care about the numbers. I am not interested that the current batter’s batting average is .325. And I really don’t care that someone is 5 for 8 when facing left-handed pitchers in away games after a rain delay. Sometimes, after hearing a ridiculously hyper-specific statistic like that, Tim will say: ‘Now that is cool.’ But all I heard was ‘blah, blah, blah,’ . . . so I don’t really know if that is cool or not. . .
“The journalist in Tim pays attention to language use, and demands concise explanations. He has tried to teach me the difference between a slider, [a] splitter, and a circle change. I am, however, all set with that. I don’t need to know. He asks if I want to know the difference between a 2-seamer and a 4-seamer, and I say, ‘I love you, but no.’ Our differences cause us trouble when he goes to get a beer during a Sox game, and someone gets a hit while he’s gone, and he asks me what happened. He wants to know whether it was a line drive, a bloop, a bleeder, a rope, or a gapper. All I can tell him is that the ball went up, the ball came down, and the guy is now on first. Are we not happy?”
And if it’s that way with baseball, just think of all the other differences that make for vast chasms between you and me and anybody else. There’s the man who stopped talking to his sister a decade ago, and can no longer even remember why. There’s the dispute about a property line that led to fisticuffs. There are all the myriad political issues that end friendships and cause untold drama. There’s the woman whose Twitter feed, of all things, has become her best friend, because she simply cannot bring up even one public issue with her husband; she’s angry and distraught. Not to mention the endless municipal, national, and international issues that divide us painfully and apparently intractably. Become one? I don’t think so!
And yet, it happens doesn’t it. By grace, dividing walls are torn down and differences are bridged and two become one. Mother and sons and daughters find forgiveness and new hope. Strained couples find a strand deep within that binds them together. Broken communities find common cause, and share an energy and a spirit.
A couple of months ago, a number of Federated people shared a meal with members of the Chagrin Valley Islamic Center, a new mosque in Solon (for whom, incidentally, ground will be broken on their new facility tomorrow. For most of us, this dinner we shared was foreign territory. If you’re like me, you know next-to-nothing about Islam. You may feel as though Muslims are from a different planet, their world apparently so different from ours. You may hear of yet more violence yesterday in Paris by a member of the Islamic State terrorist organization, and wonder if Islam in general can be trusted.
So to sit at table together and hear stories from them about their lives was eye-opening, heart-opening. I watched as a teenage daughter gently and affectionately teased her mother about her mother’s finicky attention to detail. At my dinner table, two women talked about what it was like to be a Muslim in this country. One talked about her decision to begin wearing the head-piece called a hijab years ago. The other woman teased her about that decision, saying the first woman had so loved to style her hair, and then had to totally give that up. And now, said the second woman, she exhibited her style instead with gorgeous, colorful hijabs. And then they both talked about what it was like to live in this country after 9/11. One stopped wearing her hijab then, because she felt a smothering fear. They both had been afraid for their lives.
As I listened to their mesmerizing stories, I was so struck by how different we were, and at the same time how similar we were. I, too, would have been frantic about my safety. I, too, were I woman, would have been petrified to wear a hijab, or to show that I was a Muslim. As they did, I would have yearned to express my faith openly, and I would have been mortified at the fury and ignorance and misunderstanding that came my way. To hear these stories was to break down walls. It was to become one.
This Tuesday, Islam’s season of fasting called Ramadan begins. With Ramadan, there is no eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset. None. Unless you’re old or sick or pregnant, no food or drink enters your mouth all day long. At its heart, Ramadan is a disciplined practice that reminds the faithful person that God is at the center. For all our outward differences, Christians and Muslims are united in this: the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Muhammad, the God of Jesus Christ is at the center. We all believe that when God is at the core, life is ordered and right. When we experience ourselves as one with God, we are in a heavenly state. And we are convinced that as we live out our oneness with sisters and brothers of all stripes, we are expressing and embodying God’s highest ideals.
You and I are divided by all kinds of things. We know that. But at the core, we are one. We are part of the same strand of pearls. We are all drops in the ocean of God’s love, melded and ebbing and flowing and finding our power and our grace in the way our streams course together. When we stand side by side, when we share a table together, when we talk to each other, there is nothing more crucial than to know, to know, the richness of our common life. This is what Jesus was praying for. This is what Jesus was hoping for. This is who we are in the United Church of Christ, animated as we are by the hope and prayer “that they may all be one.”
My sister-in-law Emilie says, “[This past] Saturday, while Tim and I were pressed up against the fence watching [our son Reed’s baseball] game, [he] hit his first ever home run. We heard the ball hit the bat, and we both watched it go, up and over everyone’s heads and right over the fence. We then watched Reed round the bases, and when he came around third, he saw that his whole team had cleared the bench and was waiting for him at home plate. I had feelings! He went on to get two more hits, including the one that brought in the winning run in extra innings. It was the best game of his life, by far.
“That night, when we were lying in bed and talking about the day, I said to Tim, ‘I’m so happy for Reed.’ [Tim] agreed and said how proud he was.
“And then, of course, wait for it . . . ‘His slugging percentage for the season is 1.100.’
“I asked: ‘That’s good, right?’ And Tim confirmed what I, as his mom, already knew.
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘That is very good.’”
God knows, this Mother’s Day, this day when we celebrate the fantastic music here at Federated, the exquisite blessing is that we are all one. And that is the truth above all truths. Praise be to God!